Financial Times

SDG702 - Brahms Symphony 1 (1 Nov 2008)

Gardiner's Brahms demands fresh ears.  It is quicker than any other period interpretations, more alert to the layering of Brahm's symphonic argument, more liberal with portamento and more obvious in its vibrato-free veneer.  If the result is a shade didactic, with Gardiner sometimes unable to elicit the very flexibility of phrasing and elasticity of tempo he talks about so eloquently in his programme essay, it is still enlightening.  His thesis, brilliantly executed by the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique and Monteverdi Choir, is that Brahms laid the foundations for his First Symphony on the choral music of his most cherised German forebears.  Whether that enriches the voicing of the symphony's instrumental parts is open to question.  The CD's value lies in its advocacy of the early choral works that led Brahms towards the Symphony - the Begräbnisgesang and Schicksalslied (with Mendelssohn's Mitten wir im Leben sind thrown in for good measure), signalling an unmistakable debt to the Bach Chorale.

**** [4 Stars]